20 Dec Will the Last Capitalist Please Turn Off the Lights When You Leave… by Bill Buppert

“Under a Communist Party Government, South Africa will become a land of milk and honey.”

-Nelson Mandela

Occupy Wall Street is providing a refreshing new insight into how the collectivist mind works (or does not). Now that the global warming business is starting to fall on deaf ears, the hard left government supremacist hive mind is having to find new vehicles and venues to press their agenda for universal slavery. The assault on the tattered remnants of private business is now the subject of much mewling and teeth-grinding by the usual suspects. I did want to express my personal condolences to Hillary Clinton on the death of Kim Jong Il, her dreams of a happy marriage to a more straight-forward partisan of her most secret ambitions is now dashed on the rocky shoreline of history unfulfilled. Bill’s trips to Moscow simply did not have the long-term effect desired.

Let’s get back to fundamentals. What is a private business? It is a method of trading products and services for wealth to generate profits to enrich the owners and workers in the enterprise and additionally seed the investment, growth and expansion of the business.

What is the business of government and politicians? To earn wealth and establish punitive control over individual transactions with no merit whatsoever; in other words, to employ the monopoly powers of violence to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Bastiat said it more eloquently but there it is. Politicians love to project an image of stately dignity and honorifics for the terrific and self-sacrificing service they do. The deception is blatant and they are no more than thieves wrapped in expensive state regalia with armed guards to protect them from their victims. Those victims they have not mentally turned to eunuchs already through the insidious ministrations of television, government education and the soothing bastardization of the language to manipulate the sheeple, are waking up to the sheer audacity of the heist that has been called the state. Turning the Bolshevik idyll on its head, it speaks to the true nature of government and governance.

Hence some examples of the government “business model”:

What is American-Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) return on its investment of approximately 15 million per annum in memberships and grants? About 2.77 billion taxpayer dollars plus the special dispensation granted by the DoD and other government agencies for grants and giveaways (30% of the acknowledged US foreign aid budget). Of course, we all know that per Federal Election Commission (FEC) v. Akins, et al., AIPAC is not a political organization so it is not required to file the onerous minutiae required for political lobbying even though they have five or six registered lobbyists and a host of espionage allegations.

What do the aforementioned organizations have in common? As with countless other entities in America and around the world, they would not be here except for the existence of the state. The government is the parasite and these are the looters and tax-eaters that live upon other’s production and sweat equity. These are the government analogs of organized crime, muggers and other miscreants whose sole purpose is to thrive off of other members of the community at the point of a gun. Politicians are very well-heeled and equipped highwaymen who are a menace to peace and prosperity throughout the world as history has ably demonstrated. These are simply the latest group of sociopaths and their enablers who maintain that man should not be free but under harness and micromanaged for their own good.

They have even developed a sophisticated academic rationale and industry to provide the apparent intellectual rigor to justify the rapine and murderous behavior that government creates and endorses as it merrily destroys all that is good in the world and replaces it with the hordes of shambling and compliant shells of humanity that shuffle off to work every day to pay their taxes so they feed the Machine. When you consider the tax burden just in America, it almost rivals Denmark and France. I think the graphs and charts once finds on the internet are deceptive because they don’t address the aggregate tax burden (federal, state, local, excise, corporate, etc). As I have pointed out before, when all is said and done, Americans pay nearly 60% of their income in taxes once all Federal, state and lower echelonment taxes are accounted for not to mention the impossible task of putting a dollar figure on the mountains of regulation that impede and strangle business every day. Far greater than the estimated 10% of labor the medieval serfs were yoked with. The universities and major news organs are choked with vine-ripened apologists for statist excess and murder. Whether it is the “right-wing” talk radio celebrities popping the bubbly for more strangers killed overseas or the massive “left-wing” herd of apparatchiks on the news media mewling benignly about the efficacy of more laws and restrictions on human behavior, the message is the same: more government power moves us ever closer to perfection of humanity in this mortal coil. They seek the same enigmatic creature: Homo Sovieticus.

You have to hand it to the self-described socialists and communists like Bernie Sanders and Van Jones, at least they are honest (even though I think all collectivist thought is a form of intellectual drunkenness) in who they are instead of mouthing platitudes about safety, the children and national security to disguise their unbridled lust for power and control over others. At least they have the fortitude to precisely describe their child-like reverence for the state without resorting to the intellectual gymnastics of the usual suspects in the media.

I have often thought that to be a Communist at the beginning of the twentieth century was possibly an intellectually defensible position looking at the scant history of the movement in power and practice yet one hundred years later this extreme form of collectivism should be universally reviled and is intellectually and morally indefensible; and here in 2009, not only are the same miserable failures and barbaric practices heralded but endorsed by no less than the President of this decaying country known as America.

Do you want to get a chill that makes your hair stand on end? Visit the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) website and read the naked advocacy of Obamunism. It would be fascinating to hire some historians to go through the 12,000 cartons of donated archives of the CPUSA at the Tamiment Library at NYU. They had to move the archives to clear out four floors of the office building housing CPUSA. Not to mention the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, Socialist Workers Party, Progressive Labor Party and other morally handicapped organizations. There is yet another future political forensic project to see how much money these organizations have received from the government and how many of its members have jobs in the administration. RedDR’s administration was so filled with Soviet agents, communist sympathizers like Vice President Henry Wallace and fifth columnists that it dominated the political paradigm in Washington. The New Deal was informed by all manner of collectivism during what is considered the American Communist Party’s golden age in the 1930’s and now the cycle begins anew. I highly recommend the books by Harvey Klehr and Robert Conquest if you want a deeper understanding of the juggernaut.

We often take it for granted in the libertarian orbit that it is a slam-dunk intellectually that private individuals in a cooperative sphere absent coercion are the best form of human society. If the twentieth century taught us anything, it is this: certain sociopaths in our midst have a penchant to rule and legions of willing and able followers are waiting for the chance to don the yoke and assume the role of loyal serfs. The argument on optimal human order is far from over and the individualists among us have a huge fight ahead of us to convince our fellow man of the merits of volunteerism, persuasion, cooperation and spontaneous market forces.

While the behavior of the Democrat Party makes it self-evident that they are an unabashed socialist enterprise, the behavior of the Grand Old Politburo has certainly gladdened the hearts of dictators around the planet and put the full strength and manpower of the national security state behind the efforts to track diaper purchases. We have all heard the tired old saw about the satisfaction of the Communist Manifesto in America but what about the Socialist platform from 1912? The first preamble:

The Socialist party declares that the capitalist system has outgrown its historical function, and has become utterly incapable of meeting the problems now confronting society. We denounce this outgrown system as incompetent and corrupt and the source of unspeakable misery and suffering to the whole working class.

That could have been pulled from the latest editorial by Paul Krugman in the New York Times. Here is the list of platform demands and I have italicized which items have culminated and made comments in brackets where appropriate. I offer this thought experiment: of all the items which have not been adopted, would the regime in Mordor on the Potomac advance and endorse them today if the opportunity availed itself? To wit:

Working Program

As measures calculated to strengthen the working class in its fight for the realization of its ultimate aim, the co-operative commonwealth, and to increase its power against capitalist oppression, we advocate and pledge ourselves and our elected officers to the following program:

Collective Ownership

The collective ownership and democratic management of railroads, wire and wireless telegraphs and telephones, express service, steamboat lines, and all other social means of transportation and communication and of all large scale industries. [This has been effectively achieved through comprehensive vertical and horizontal regulation of the marketplace especially in the Federal arena.]

The immediate acquirement by the municipalities, the states or the federal government of all grain elevators, stock yards, storage warehouses, and other distributing agencies, in order to reduce the present extortionate cost of living. [Read some of the Homeland Security edicts and the emerging law on hoarding.]

The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests and water power. [Look at the percentages of Federal land in the Rocky Mountain Western states for a chilling view of DC ownership of resources and land.]

The further conservation and development of natural resources for the use and benefit of all the people . . .

The collective ownership of land wherever practicable, and in cases where such ownership is impracticable, the appropriation by taxation of the annual rental value of all the land held for speculation and exploitation.

The collective ownership and democratic management of the banking and currency system.

Unemployment

The immediate government relief of the unemployed by the extension of all useful public works. All persons employed on such works to be engaged directly by the government under a work day of not more than eight hours and at not less than the prevailing union wages. The government also to establish employment bureaus; to lend money to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works, and to take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class.

Industrial Demands

The conservation of human resources, particularly of the lives and well-being of the workers and their families:

By shortening the work day in keeping with the increased productiveness of machinery.

By securing for every worker a rest period of not less than a day and a half in each week.

By securing a more effective inspection of workshops, factories and mines.

By the forbidding the employment of children under sixteen years of age.

By the co-operative organization of the industries in the federal penitentiaries for the benefit of the convicts and their dependents.

By forbidding the interstate transportation of the products of child labor, of convict labor and of all uninspected factories and mines.

By abolishing the profit system in government work and substituting either the direct hire of labor or the awarding of contracts to co-operative groups of workers.

By establishing minimum wage scales.

By abolishing official charity and substituting a non-contributory system of old age pensions, a general system of insurance by the State of all its members against unemployment and invalidism and a system of compulsory insurance by employers of their workers, without cost to the latter, against industrial diseases, accidents and death.[Social Security and its appendages satisfied this plea.]

Political Demands

The absolute freedom of press, speech and assemblage. [One of the few sane proposals in the entire platform.]

The adoption of a graduated income tax and the extension of inheritance taxes, graduated in proportion to the value of the estate and to nearness of kin-the proceeds of these taxes to be employed in the socialization of industry.

The abolition of the monopoly ownership of patents and the substitution of collective ownership, with direct rewards to inventors by premiums or royalties. [How do you incentivize innovation in the absence of sowing the fruits of individual labor?]

Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women.

The adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall and of proportional representation, nationally as well as locally.

The abolition of the Senate and of the veto power of the President.

The election of the President and Vice-President by direct vote of the people.

The abolition of the power usurped by the Supreme Court of the United States to pass upon the constitutionality of the legislation enacted by Congress. National laws to be repealed only by act of Congress or by a referendum vote of the whole people.

Abolition of the present restrictions upon the amendment of the constitution, so that instrument may be made amendable by a majority of the voters in a majority of the States.

The granting of the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia with representation in Congress and a democratic form of municipal government for purely local affairs.

The extension of democratic government to all United States territory.

The enactment of further measures for the conservation of health. The creation of an independent bureau of health, with such restrictions as will secure full liberty to all schools of practice.

The enactment of further measures for general education and particularly for vocational education in useful pursuits. The Bureau of Education to be made a department.

The separation of the present Bureau of Labor from the Department of Commerce and Labor and its elevation to the rank of a department.

Abolition of federal districts courts and the United States circuit court of appeals. State courts to have jurisdiction in all cases arising between citizens of several states and foreign corporations. The election of all judges for short terms. [Another meritorious platform requirement

The immediate curbing of the power of the courts to issue injunctions.

The free administration of the law.

The calling of a convention for the revision of the constitution of the U. S. [I would prefer the abolition thereof and the break-up of these united States.]

With very few exceptions, this and the Communist Manifesto is the intellectual backbone of America’s political leadership. Excepting Ron Paul, what politician at the Federal level is championing states rights, freed markets and non-interventionism domestically and overseas? Not a soul.

“We shall tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect.”

-Harry Hopkins*

*Harry Hopkins was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country. In World War II he was Roosevelt’s chief diplomatic advisor and troubleshooter and was a key policy maker in the $50 billion Lend Lease program that sent aid to the allies.

Jim Klein

GREAT essay, Bill; thanks. “Co-operative commonwealth”…now there’s one for the Newspeak Dictionary, eh? I think it means, “everyone stealing from everyone else whatever they can, and nobody producing anything.” Some cooperation, some commonwealth.

Once those camps are up and running, I can hardly wait for the definition of “fair”! I take that back; I can wait.